Swanage Folk festival
No photos of Swanage Folk Festival this year, since it was too hot to venture outside on Saturday, and I was dancing there yesterday. (People were taking photos of me, which I suppose is payback for all the photos I've taken of dancers in previous years).
It poured with rain on the journey there, and I was thinking "Hurrah, it will be cool, and we will be dancing in the rain, and no-one will be watching." But no, it stopped raining soon after we arrived. The sun came out. It was hot and humid. There were crowds.
We were allocated three dance spots, alternating with other sides. I was too nervous to enjoy the dancing much, too busy concentrating on where I had to be, too busy counting in my head. It all went well until the third set, when we did the Dance That Sometimes Goes Horribly Wrong, and it went horribly wrong. (It's an ambitious, complicated, eight person dance, and when it goes right it is impressive. But all it takes is for one person to be in the wrong place, and then it becomes a game of dodge-seven-randomly-moving-people...)
But we managed to finish the dance, somehow. Spirits picked up for the final dance, and there was some laughter and a bit of banter as we danced, so the season's dancing out finished on a good note.
***
For the two days of the festival, Swanage is full of Morris dancers. I think there were something like sixty different dance sides dancing over the two days.
Walking between dance spots, we passed a woman complaining, "Bloody Morris dancers! If it wasn't for them, we would be able to get a table at the café..."
Which seemed quite amusing when she was walking along, oblivious, surrounded by people wearing bells and sinister tall feathery hats.
***
My sister, walking back to the car park, not wearing bells: "I am in stealth mode."
It poured with rain on the journey there, and I was thinking "Hurrah, it will be cool, and we will be dancing in the rain, and no-one will be watching." But no, it stopped raining soon after we arrived. The sun came out. It was hot and humid. There were crowds.
We were allocated three dance spots, alternating with other sides. I was too nervous to enjoy the dancing much, too busy concentrating on where I had to be, too busy counting in my head. It all went well until the third set, when we did the Dance That Sometimes Goes Horribly Wrong, and it went horribly wrong. (It's an ambitious, complicated, eight person dance, and when it goes right it is impressive. But all it takes is for one person to be in the wrong place, and then it becomes a game of dodge-seven-randomly-moving-people...)
But we managed to finish the dance, somehow. Spirits picked up for the final dance, and there was some laughter and a bit of banter as we danced, so the season's dancing out finished on a good note.
***
For the two days of the festival, Swanage is full of Morris dancers. I think there were something like sixty different dance sides dancing over the two days.
Walking between dance spots, we passed a woman complaining, "Bloody Morris dancers! If it wasn't for them, we would be able to get a table at the café..."
Which seemed quite amusing when she was walking along, oblivious, surrounded by people wearing bells and sinister tall feathery hats.
***
My sister, walking back to the car park, not wearing bells: "I am in stealth mode."